National Defense > Blog > Posts > For the Air Force, Buying New Weapons Is Not What It Used to Be

6/27/2010

For the Air Force, Buying New Weapons Is Not What It Used to Be
These are tough time for buyers of military weapons. After decades of money-is-no-object shopping at Gucci, they are being told to buy on sale at Target.

No more “exquisite” weapons is the mantra at the Defense Department, as Secretary Robert Gates continues to reprimand the military services for their business-as-usual approach to buying big-ticket hardware.

The austerity measures are hitting the Air Force particularly hard. After losing a long and ugly battle over the F-22 fighter, the service was still hoping for a green light to proceed with the design of a new long-range bomber to replace half-century-old B-52s and Cold War favorites B-1 and B-2.

But the so-called “next-generation bomber” was nixed by Gates, who argued that the Air Force was being too conventional in its thinking about how to go about replacing older bombers. The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review calls for the Air Force to develop multiple long-range strike capabilities rather than a single new aircraft with a narrowly defined mission.

Gates has knocked both the Air Force and the Navy for how they determine what new weapons they need to modernize their fleets. The services build their budget requests based on what they consider “gaps” in their arsenals without asking fundamental questions such as why they need those new systems, Gates has said. The recommended solutions tend to be “more of what we already have.” Gates also wants the services to frame their budget expectations against the overall financial health of the nation. “The Department of Defense’s record as a steward of taxpayer dollars leaves much to be desired,” he said in speech at an industry conference.

These marching orders have thrown the Air Force’s plans for a new bomber into a tailspin.

“The term next-generation bomber is dead” in the Air Force and in the Defense Department, said Lt. Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements.

The Air Force now has to come up with a plan for how it will conduct strike warfare against every conceivable enemy target with a combination of current weapons, novel tactics and some new hardware, too. In the past, the Air Force would have focused just on buying a new shiny bomber.

The latest moniker for the less-exquisite alternative is “long-range strike platform.” It is not a single system, but rather a “family of capabilities,” Breedlove said at a conference last week hosted by the Air Force Association.

The family of long-range strike platforms will include aircraft and weapons from today’s inventory — fighter and strike jets, electronic-warfare aircraft, remotely-piloted planes, long-range missiles and possibly a newly designed bomber that could be manned or unmanned. The Air Force and the Navy will both contribute to the long-range strike “portfolio,” Breedlove said.

The project has received heightened attention from the defense industry in recent months because it is regarded as one of the last big-ticket military programs that may be launched before the Pentagon is hit with the budget ax in the coming years.

“Long-range strike is the number-one thing I’m asked about when I travel,” said Breedlove.

“We’re talking about a long-range strike platform that is very different from what you knew as next-gen bomber,” he said.

The scope of this project is enormous. The Air Force will have to identify what weapons and delivery mechanisms it will need to hit a huge array of targets — from guerilla fighters riding in pickup trucks, to insurgents hiding in a building, enemy air-defense systems, deeply buried enemy bunkers as well as concealed nuclear weapon facilities.

The long-range strike family will include the F-22 fighter and most of the conventional bombs and missiles in the current arsenal, said Breedlove. “Any discussion of long-range strike starts with the contribution of existing systems,” he said.

Yet-to-be developed systems may include a medium-range ballistic missile and a still-defined class of high-end weapons known as “conventional prompt global strike,” which would be capable of hitting any target on the face of the globe in under an hour.

Another piece of the long-range strike family is what Breedlove described as “enablers.” The enablers would be systems that support the strike missions by providing additional protection to bombers and fighters. Enablers also would collect and disseminate intelligence for the mission and help strike aircraft hit targets more precisely. In the past, Breedlove said, “we would build a very capable, exquisite single system that was expected to do all this by itself: penetrate, do its own self protection, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance), target, deliver with precision and stealth.” But that is no longer an option. “Those systems tend to be big and expensive,” he said. “That’s a bit of a culture shift. Before, we would think of a platform that would do every mission by itself.

“What you’ll see are smaller [systems] that are enabled by other platforms to get them into the target area,” said Breedlove. “That’s where the really good thinking is happening.”

The enablers would work like “utility infielders,” he said. One would be a jamming platform, another would do ISR, and others would suppress and destroy enemy air defenses. “It would be an enabler that makes the other pieces successful,” Breedlove said. “So the other platforms don’t have to be so exquisite to do their job.” The ISR systems, such as unmanned aircraft, not only would have to be able to stay in orbit for long periods but also have powerful enough sensors to detect deeply buried targets.

Many unresolved issues remain, however.

The Air Force is trying to build a case that it should be a “core requirement” of a long-range strike family of systems to guarantee that it can prosecute any target in the world, no matter how cleverly concealed it might be. “You cannot allow an enemy to believe they have a sanctuary because of policy or equipment decisions our nation made,” Breedlove said.

The long-range strike effort also is tied into the larger U.S. strategy to modernize the nuclear triad. The third leg would be come under the Air Force’s long-range capability to deliver nuclear weapons, said Breedlove. “We want to be able to pull the trigger with conventional prompt global strike and take [an enemy nuclear missile launcher or a terrorist camp] down inside of 40 minutes.”

Another hot topic in this debate is how a future long-range strike aircraft, if it’s not going to be a large bomber like the B-2, could be built to carry existing weapons. “Some of today’s weapons are huge,” Breedlove said. “Payload is an important discussion.”

A new aircraft may not be ready for another 12 to 15 years, he said. The dilemma for the Air Force is how to design an aircraft for the weapons it has now and the ones it will have in 12 to 15 years. By that time, the aircraft also could face missions that nobody has yet thought about.

Despite the budget constraints, Air Force leaders will still insist that a big and costly new bomber may be needed in order to locate and destroy deeply buried targets such as nuclear-weapon bunkers. “Enemies are burying themselves deeper in hardened areas,” said Breedlove. “That drives sometimes a very exquisite and expensive answer in how we address those targets.”

Precise, deep penetrating weapons today are gigantic, such as the 21,000-pound “massive ordnance air blast bomb,” or MOAB. “We need the MOAB capability at about one-third the size,” said Breedlove. Future weapons have to come in at a “weight that can be carried by an aircraft that we can afford,” he said.

Part of the heated deliberations in the Defense Department these days is “how much can our nation afford to address?” he says. There is also a geopolitical side to this, such as what future enemies may read into whatever the Pentagon ends up buying, Breedlove noted. “Do the weapons that we buy telegram to our opponents how much of the nation’s wealth are we willing to put against those targets?”

Ashleigh Fugate contributed to this report.
Posted at 2:42 PM by Sandra Erwin | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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